3,104 research outputs found
A Sterile Neutrino Search with Kaon Decay-at-rest
Monoenergetic muon neutrinos (235.5 MeV) from positive kaon decay-at-rest are
considered as a source for an electron neutrino appearance search. In
combination with a liquid argon time projection chamber based detector, such a
source could provide discovery-level sensitivity to the neutrino oscillation
parameter space indicative of a sterile neutrino. Current and future intense >3
GeV kinetic energy proton facilities around the world can be employed for this
experimental concept.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figure
Adaptive weight estimator for quantum error correction
Quantum error correction of a surface code or repetition code requires the
pairwise matching of error events in a space-time graph of qubit measurements,
such that the total weight of the matching is minimized. The input weights
follow from a physical model of the error processes that affect the qubits.
This approach becomes problematic if the system has sources of error that
change over time. Here we show how the weights can be determined from the
measured data in the absence of an error model. The resulting adaptive decoder
performs well in a time-dependent environment, provided that the characteristic
time scale of the variations is greater than , with the duration of one error-correction cycle and
the typical error probability per qubit in one cycle.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
Sterile Neutrino Fits to Short Baseline Neutrino Oscillation Measurements
This paper reviews short baseline oscillation experiments as interpreted
within the context of one, two, and three sterile neutrino models associated
with additional neutrino mass states in the ~1 eV range. Appearance and
disappearance signals and limits are considered. We show that fitting short
baseline data sets to a (3+3) model, defined by three active and three sterile
neutrinos, results in an overall goodness of fit of 67%, and a compatibility of
90% among all data sets -- to be compared to the compatibility of 0.043% and
13% for a (3+1) and a (3+2) model, respectively. While the (3+3) fit yields the
highest quality overall, it still finds inconsistencies with the MiniBooNE
appearance data sets; in particular, the global fit fails to account for the
observed MiniBooNE low-energy excess. Given the overall improvement, we
recommend using the results of (3+2) and (3+3) fits, rather than (3+1) fits,
for future neutrino oscillation phenomenology. These results motivate the
pursuit of further short baseline experiments, such as those reviewed in this
paper.Comment: Submitted to Advances in High Energy Physics Special Issue on
Neutrino Physic
ArgoNeuT, a liquid argon time projection chamber in a low energy neutrino beam
ArgoNeuT (Argon Neutrino Test), a NSF/DOE project at Fermilab, is the first
LArTPC to go in a low energy neutrino beam and just the second LArTPC to go in
a neutrino beam ever. ArgoNeuT sits just upstream of the on-axis MINOS near
detector in the NuMI beamline, about 1 km from the target station and 100 m
underground. The detector features a 47X40X90 cm (169 L) active volume TPC with
a fully contained recirculation and purification system. Among other physics,
ArgoNeuT will measure the charged-current quasi-elastic (anti-) neutrino cross
section on argon at an energy of ~3 GeV.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figures, to appear in the proceedings of the 11th
International Conference on Topics in Astroparticle and Underground Physics
(TAUP 2009), Rome, Italy, 1-5 July 200
Measuring Active-to-Sterile Neutrino Oscillations with Neutral Current Coherent Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering
Light sterile neutrinos have been introduced as an explanation for a number
of oscillation signals at eV. Neutrino oscillations at
relatively short baselines provide a probe of these possible new states. This
paper describes an accelerator-based experiment using neutral current coherent
neutrino-nucleus scattering to strictly search for active-to-sterile neutrino
oscillations. This experiment could, thus, definitively establish the existence
of sterile neutrinos and provide constraints on their mixing parameters. A
cyclotron-based proton beam can be directed to multiple targets, producing a
low energy pion and muon decay-at-rest neutrino source with variable distance
to a single detector. Two types of detectors are considered: a germanium-based
detector inspired by the CDMS design and a liquid argon detector inspired by
the proposed CLEAR experiment.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure
Demonstrating a directional detector based on neon for characterizing high energy neutrons
MITPC is a gas-based time projection chamber used for detecting fast, MeV-scale neutrons. The standard version of the detector relies on a mixture of 600 torr gas composed of 87.5% ⁴He and 12.5% CF₄ for precisely measuring the energy and direction of neutron-induced nuclear recoils. We describe studies performed with a prototype detector investigating the use of Ne, as a replacement for ⁴He, in the gas mixture. Our discussion focuses on the advantages of Ne as the fast neutron target for high energy neutron events (lesssim100 MeV) and a demonstration that the mixture will be effective for this event class. We find that the achievable gain and transverse diffusion of drifting electrons in the Ne mixture are acceptable and that the detector uptime lost due to voltage breakdowns in the amplification plane is negligible, compared to ~ 20% with the ⁴He mixture.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (NSF-PHY- 1505855
Low temperature exciton-exciton annihilation in amphi-PIPE J-aggregates
The mobility of optically excited excitons on J-aggregates can be demonstrated by the phenomena of exciton-exciton annihilation. In this intensity-dependent process the collision of two excitons results in their annihilation and hence in a shortening of the mean excitation lifetime. By measuring the intensity-dependent fluorescent lifetime in contrast to the predicted immobilization of the excitons at low temperature we could prove the excellent mobility of the excitons at a temperature (4K), which is far below their expected freezing point
Optimized signal deduction procedure for the MIEZE neutron spectroscopy technique
We report a method to determine the phase and amplitude of sinusoidally
modulated event rates, binned into 4 bins per oscillation. The presented
algorithm relies on a reconstruction of the unknown parameters. It omits a
calculation intensive fitting procedure and avoids contrast reduction due to
averaging effects. It allows the current data acquisition bottleneck to be
relaxed by a factor of 4. Here, we explain the approach in detail and compare
it to the established fitting procedures of time series having 4 and 16 time
bins per oscillation. In addition we present the empirical estimates of the
errors of the three methods and compare them to each other. We show that the
reconstruction is unbiased, asymptotic, and efficient for estimating the phase.
Reconstructing the contrast, which corresponds to the amplitude of the
modulation, is roughly 10% less efficient than fitting 16 time binned
oscillations. Finally, we give analytical equations to estimate the error for
phase and contrast as a function of their initial values and counting
statistics.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, submitted to IOP Measurement Science and
Technolog
Ab Initio Study of Hybrid b-bar-gb Mesons
Hybrid b-bar-gb molecules in which the heavy b-bar-b pair is bound together
by the excited gluon field g are studied using the Born-Oppenheimer expansion
and numerical simulations. The consistency of results from the two approaches
reveals a simple and compelling physical picture for heavy hybrid states.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, uses REVTeX and epsf, final published versio
Analysis of a Large Sample of Neutrino-Induced Muons with the ArgoNeuT Detector
ArgoNeuT, or Argon Neutrino Test, is a 170 liter liquid argon time projection
chamber designed to collect neutrino interactions from the NuMI beam at Fermi
National Accelerator Laboratory. ArgoNeuT operated in the NuMI low-energy beam
line directly upstream of the MINOS Near Detector from September 2009 to
February 2010, during which thousands of neutrino and antineutrino events were
collected. The MINOS Near Detector was used to measure muons downstream of
ArgoNeuT. Though ArgoNeuT is primarily an R&D project, the data collected
provide a unique opportunity to measure neutrino cross sections in the 0.1-10
GeV energy range. Fully reconstructing the muon from these interactions is
imperative for these measurements. This paper focuses on the complete kinematic
reconstruction of neutrino-induced through-going muons tracks. Analysis of this
high statistics sample of minimum ionizing tracks demonstrates the reliability
of the geometric and calorimetric reconstruction in the ArgoNeuT detector
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